Paper Towns Rewrite
by theterminator85
Summary: A rewritten scene of what happened the first night when Margo Roth Spiegleman opened Q's screen door and slipped into his room like a ninja.


**Prologue**

**Rewrite**

"Only two things are infinite- the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not so sure about the universe."

-Albert Einstein

**The way I figure it,** human beings shouldn't mess around with some of the things that they're considering messing around with. Like, scientists are talking about time travel, and how it could help save millions of people (mainly Jews) from Hitler, or something like that, and everybody thinks that's the coolest idea since sliced bread. But what no one's talking about are the catastrophic effects that altering the past could have, mainly if the type of time travel that exists is the Type 2 time travel, which basically means that altering one tiny event in the past will have a "butterfly effect" on the future, changing the world as we know it. I see the past as already being set in stone, which is why I have such a big problem with the idea of going back in time. The past doesn't want to be changed, so don't change it. Just leave it alone. God knows we already have enough things to worry about in our lives.

And this also holds true for my beliefs of the future- no, of course it isn't set in stone, but it does have a general plan of what it wants to be like. For example, the world won't explode tomorrow, the future doesn't want that. Nor will bin Laden come back to life tomorrow, and aliens won't come to earth tomorrow, because that isn't how it's supposed to be. And the future, as I've lived through it, has become what it's supposed to have become. It wasn't doing anything hasty or irrational- well, except for fating me to live next to a girl with sociopathic tendencies- and I was glad for that, because I was heading off to Duke in a few months and probably couldn't afford any irrational events out of my control.

It wasn't doing anything hasty or irrational, that is, until just before midnight on the longest day of my life, when Margo Roth Spiegleman slid open my screenless bedroom window for the first time since telling me to close it nine years ago.

**1.**

**I swiveled around** when I heard the window open, and Margo's blue eyes were staring back at me. Her eyes were all I could see at first, but as my vision adjusted, I realized she was wearing black face paint and a black hoodie. "Why are you on the computer at midnight?" she asked.

"I'm IM'ing with Ben Starling."

"That doesn't answer my question."

I laughed awkwardly, not being able to imagine why she was here, in my window, like this. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" I asked. Margo and I were still friendly, I guess, but we weren't meet-in-the-dead-of-night-wearing-black-face-paint friendly. She had friends for that, I'm sure. I just wasn't among them.

"I need your car," she explained.

"I don't have a car," I said, which was something of a sore point for me.

"Well, then I need your mom's car."

"You have your own car," I pointed out.

Margo puffed out her cheeks and sighed. "Right, but the thing is, my parents have taken the keys to my car and locked them inside a safe, which they put under their bed, which would normally be totally cool and fine and all that stuff, except for the fact that they made Myrna Mountweazel" – who was her dog- "sleep on the floor right next to the safe, and she has a complete breakdown whenever she catches sight of me, which she surely will if I try to sneak the safe out. So, like I said, I need a car. Also, I need you to drive it, because I have to do eleven things tonight, and at least five of them involve a getaway man. Possibly more. Probably more."

I scratched the back of my head. "Any felonies?"

"Hmm," said Margo. "Remind me if breaking and entering is a felony."

"No," I answered firmly.

"No it's not a felony or no you won't help?"

"No I won't help. Unless you forgot, I am going to college in the fall and I would very much appreciate it if the police would not have to make a call to Duke later tonight and inform them of my criminal record, because, unlike you, I care about my life and my future. Can't you enlist one of your underlings to drive you around instead?"

"They're part of the problem, actually," Margo said.

"What problem?" I asked.

"There are eleven problems," she said somewhat impatiently, "and I need you to help me resolve them."

"What? So you're, like, going to do a bunch of evil stuff to people and rationalize it by saying you're solving problems?

She shrugged. "Yeah, pretty much."

"And you need me to chauffeur you around like a servant?"

"No felonies," she reminded, as if that helped.

I shook my head. This was just too risky. I didn't know the horrible plans she'd concocted to solve her problems, but I was sure they weren't particularly nice or legal. "I'm sorry, Margo, but I can't."

"I sweat to whoever's out there, watching down upon us, if there is such a being"- she was a firm Atheist- "that you will not be asked to commit a felony."

I almost caved there, but shook my head again. "Again, I'm sorry, Margo, but I can't." I held the window open. "And I don't think you should, either."

She stared at me for a while like she was hoping I'd change my mind, but after she got that I wasn't budging, the life and spark in her blue eyes turned into coldness. "I thought, since you weren't one of the problems, I could just trust you and we'd take care of the problems and that would be cool."

I sighed. "Who are these problems you keep talking about? What are you going to do to them?"

She didn't answer, just leaped out of the window and ran across my front yard, back to her house, and the next day, she was gone.


End file.
